Christmas Photo

We are trying to get a nice family Christmas photo for our cards this year. Oh what a challenge. Here are a few pictures to give you a hint.

Tree Falling

I believe this is the third or fourth tree falling I've had. However this is the first for an artificial tree. The cheap plastic tree stand broke. Of course upon further investigation it was determined to be operator error. Anyway, I reassembled the tree from top to bottom. So now I've put up the Christmas tree twice before thanksgiving!

Peaceful Sleep

Fakesgiving

I have lots of catching up to do. Saturday Nov 15th my mom and her hubby David came over for Fakesgiving. We were joined by his three sons and daughter in laws. The boys all like to hunt so a Thanksgiving feast is usually hard to do.

Operation Gratitude

We mailed out candy to the Army National Guard in California today. Almost 30 pounds worth, 28 pounds and 12 oz. Plus a check for $105 to help Operation Gratitude ship our candy and other care packages to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Brett was very watchful of the candy as dad tried to steal from the stash, "Don't dad, this is the soldier's candy". I'm very excited to see Brett in the spirit of giving.

Mark suggested we all go to the musuem this morning. It was the first trip there ever for the boys.

And I think they liked it. Brett loved to see the dinosaurs and the giant squid. The bones weren't as impressive to him as the actual models. We didn't stay too long, but the boys liked being somewhere new. I'm sorry I know these pictures are very foggy, but the humidity in the butterfly room is very high. This is special to Brett because this is a blue morpho butterfly. Yes, the one that Diego saved! Brett thought that was cool. And the giant stink flower had not bloomed yet when we were there and it was amazing how quickly it grows. For more info you can go to wikipedia, and look for the titan arum. It is very interesting. This is a picture of what it will look like in bloom. It is about 6 ft tall now and can grow up to 8" in one day. And finally, what is that you say stuck on my shoulder, why yes, it is a walking stick. What a nice bug. And that is Barrett totally intrigued by the millipede I'm holding. And this is no American milipede, but a large very friendly nice African Milipede. And they did have the hissing Madagascar cockroaches out to handle too. The ones that got eaten on Fear Factor. And not so much drama in Africa, kids look for them on trees and eat them like candy!

The Last of the Halloween

I can't believe I haven't gotten the last of the Halloween Pictures up yet. I went to Brett's school for their Halloween party to help. They had a cute little parade up and down the hall. And Barrett entertained himself in the classroom!

The picture of Brett in a cemetary was on Halloween night. It was at a subdivision party before we went trick or treating. And self explanatory, Barrett trying on Minnie hands!

Carriage Ride

It took me a while to get these files, here is a carriage ride from a few weeks ago. You can see Max working hard to get us up the hill into the barn. And finally Brett helping me walk him back to the pasture.

Beautiful Autumn Day

We were all outside enjoying that beautiful weather on Friday. I couldn't quite get a good group picture, it is nearly impossible to get two kids, a bird, and a dog to look at the camera at the same time. But we sure had fun on the swing set.